Nina on Earth
by planet p
Summary: Radek is on Earth and asks out a woman working as a cashier in a hardware store. Radek/Neeva


**Nina on Earth** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _Stargate: Atlantis_ or any of its characters.

* * *

She'd come to Earth to escape, to live. On Earth, she'd taken the name Nina Cashel.

It hadn't been easy, but she'd managed it; just as she'd managed to escape death when the contingency from Atlantis had left her to die.

And now she was living on their home planet.

She now had a home, and a job. She even had a motorcar. None of them were the flashest around, nor the most hi-tech, but they sufficed for their purpose, and she was allowed to live another day. So she couldn't complain, she thought.

Until the day that Radek Zelenka walked into the hardware store where she worked the cash register. Several thoughts leapt through her mind at once, most of them revolving around the deafening: _Shouldn't he be in the Pegasus Galaxy? _And then:_ Maybe he has a twin. Please make this man be his twin!_

As he drew closer and closer to her position behind the counter – he was obviously going to ask her to point out where something was which he couldn't find – her eyes widened and she wished she could turn around and duck behind the counter until he was gone, but her boss would be watching on the surveillance system he'd had set up in the shop, and if not now, definitely later, and he'd be angry that she'd let a customer get away or ignored 'assisting' them.

Then she thought how unfortunate it was that they were standing in a hardware store, when the first and last time they'd met she'd stabbed him with a plier and left him for dead. (If she'd just saved his life on an alien planet, then maybe he'd be willing to call it even, but at this point, she was frightened he'd call up his military buddies and have her taken away, back to the planet she'd escaped to be executed with an axe, this time for good.)

She didn't want to die, and she certainly didn't think having her head severed with an axe did her the least bit of justice. (A duel to the death, or a gun fight, or an assault against an enemy in a deep space battle cruiser, maybe…)

For a split second, she pondered that he'd not recognise her, and then it hit her: _Of course he wouldn't_ recognise her, when she'd stabbed him, she'd been inhabiting the body of the doctor, Jennifer Keller. He would not recognise her!

She felt a wave of relief settle over her like a light summer breeze.

She was still safe.

With a cheery ease, she pointed out the aisle in which he'd find what he was after, and waited for him to decide whether they had what he wanted, and whether, if so, he'd buy the item at their price, and later, for him to leave again. (She'd feel much better, all the same, with him gone.)

Eight minutes later, she watched him walk back over, this time with several gadgets in hand – gladly, she saw, he'd picked no pliers. He stopped if front of the counter with his items and placed them down for her to scan and pushed his spectacles back up his nose.

As she scanned the items, she had to listen to him humming something, and she decided to listen to the humming instead of wondering what he was going to do with the things he was buying.

When she'd finished scanning everything he'd put down, she looked up and summed up the bill for him, waiting for him to take out the money, or present a card.

But he only stood there.

(He'd stopped humming, she noticed.)

She felt a lurch in her gut. Maybe he'd figured out who she was! But he can't have, she told herself. She was thinking stupidly. He can't, can't, can't have!

There was no way he could have!

Right?

She didn't blink, or flinch, but kept watching him, waiting. She would just wait, just like she was.

After a moment, it worked. He realised what she was waiting for, and got out some money, then put some away when she gave him the quote again.

She didn't expect him to ask her out.

(She didn't expect to say 'yes.')

_Dumb, dumb, dumb!_ She wanted to race after him and pull him around to face her and tell him that she hadn't been thinking when she'd agreed to go out with him, that she'd been scared, them embarrassed, and she'd just wanted him to go away, and she'd felt stupid just staring, so she'd said the first thing that leapt into her mind.

She wanted to tell him to get lost, but he was gone by the time she pulled herself together another to open her mouth and string together two words.

* * *

All day, afterward, she felt miserable. She should have said, right away, "No way!" Or, after she'd messed up, "The deal's off!" Or, "I don't think so, I've just changed my mind."

She didn't expect him to be waiting outside for her when she finished work – but that was just her luck, she supposed, if the day had been anything to go on – and tried not to jump all the way out of her skin. She stopped herself short of turning tail and tearing off down the street a couple of blocks.

She would just have to face what she had gotten herself into, so she put on her most amicable face.

* * *

It was only after dinner at a diner that she noticed that he was a little funny, and a little bit cute. (He wasn't Sheppard, but she kind of liked how his glasses would slip down his nose and he would have to push them back up again. And he did have nice eyes, they reminded her of a blue alcoholic beverage she'd had once, though she didn't think she'd be having it again; it had made her silly.)

Funny and cute was a lot better than the last man she'd gone out with, even if it had been to an expensive restaurant.

But maybe funny and cute was worse – much worse – because it made her put her arm through his on the walk back to his car, and that was strange.

Even though she didn't regularly do things like that, she wanted to hug him, now, too, and touch him… (and there hadn't even been any alcohol involved). She was a bit scared, and she wondered if maybe it would be the best thing to do to just tell him, and then he'd leave… well, she supposed he'd leave.

But then he was saying how he'd drive her home, and her mind pounced onto the idea that she could offer him a coffee, if he drank coffee… and she got even more scared that her mind was up to something which involved finishing the job she'd started and eliminating the threat…

Which was him.

But she didn't want to eliminate anyone.

(She worked in a _hardware_ store because she was sick of thinking that she'd have to kill someone just to get _away_ with the goods and keep her life. She had a new life, now; a different life.)

She let him drive her home, but she didn't stick around to say 'goodnight' or to have him walk her to her door.

Inside, she watched the light grow red and fade from her window and knew that he'd left.

Before she went to bed, she wished that that would be the last time that she saw him. (He would go back to Atlantis tomorrow, she told herself; or, if not tomorrow, very soon. And he'd forget all about her.)


End file.
